How Far Would You Go?

I'd go all the way. Nothing gets me more annoyed than a company ill equipped to deal with a customer issue that hasn't been anticipated and is so lacking in initiative they can't find a way around it.

Like the time I bought a new kitchen from Kitchen Italia. Little did I know that the Electrolux oven I was being sold in the UK was in fact Italian and Electrolux in the UK couldn't get the parts for it. Was it Kitchen Italia's fault? Electrolux's? I don't care - I paid money in good faith, and I just wanted it to work.

So when it broke after less than a year of having it installed, I went through 3 months of agonising pain to try and get it fixed.

It was this horrific cycle of Electrolux sending out an engineer to diagnose the problem, ordering the part, the part takes too long to arrive so Electrolux cancels the order, I phone up to find out what's going on, Electrolux say they'll send around an engineer...you see how this is going to go don't you?

After the third time of them cancelling the part on order and not telling me, I lost it. (I'd say I'd been more than patient enough, wouldn't you?)

But where do I go from here?

Luckily for me, working in PR I knew some people who knew some people and after one mildly intimidating call to Electrolux's PR department from a well established journalist friend of mine, I received a call from the head of customer services at Electrolux offering to upgrade my oven for free and have someone come and install it within the week. Woo Hoo!

But what about average Joe? I guess he can write to the papers and hope someone cares...Watchdog isn't much of a threat, especially if your problem is unique.

But until companies empower their customer support staff to actually do the jobs they're hired to do, my best advice is don't give up; don your suit of armour and head into battle.